QSCAT-R Dataset | Download the Dataset

Download the QSCAT-R Dataset

The QuikSCAT Tropical Cyclone Radial Structure Dataset (QSCAT-R) consists of tropical cyclone (TC) data that have been collected and processed from the following sources:

  • NASA JPL QuikSCAT Tropical Cyclone database, and
  • IBTrACS Best Track (BT) Dataset.

The current version of the dataset includes tropical cyclones from all global ocean basins for the years 1999-2009, during which the QuikSCAT satellite was operational.

The dataset contains QuikSCAT-derived data for the radial structure of tropical cyclones, including:

  • radial profiles of total windspeed and its azimuthal and radial components,
  • canonical wind radii (64 kt, 50 kt, 34 kt, 12 ms-1) estimated from the radial profile of the azimuthal wind and total wind,
  • radial profile of a quantity proportional to rain rate, and
  • radial profile of collocated SSM/I cloud liquid data, when available.

Designated Contact Scientist for the QSCAT-R Dataset

Please direct scientific and technical inquiries pertaining to the QSCAT-R Dataset to:

	Dr. Daniel Chavas
        Assistant Professor
        Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
	Purdue University
	550 Stadium Mall Drive, HAMP 3221
	West Lafayette, IN 47907
	United States
	tel:   +001 (765)496-6661
	email: drchavas@gmail.com

Copyright Notice

The QuikSCAT Tropical Cyclone Radial Structure Dataset is copyrighted by Princeton University:

       Copyright © 2015, Princeton University. 
       All rights reserved.

License Agreement

The QSCAT-R Dataset is provided under a modified BSD-3 open source license agreement. Please take a minute to read and understand the License Agreement.

Guidelines for Dataset Use

Guidelines are available for best practices for providing attribution, acknowledgments, and other aspects of use in scholarly works. Please take a minute to read these Guidelines for Use.

Subscribe to get updates about the QSCAT-R Dataset

If you would like to be notified when new versions of this dataset become available, or in the event that any errors are found, please subscribe to the QSCAT-R Dataset mailing list. This list will only be used to notify users about important news about the QSCAT-R Dataset.

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Download the QSCAT-R Dataset files for each storm

Download the QSCAT-R Dataset files for all storms

  • QSCAT-R data (145 MB .zip file; includes all storms, one netcdf file per storm)

Get the full documentation for the QSCAT-R Dataset

Example code to read the QSCAT-R Dataset

An example code set is provided to aid users in reading the dataset products. The example code reads in all of the data parameters for one storm (Katrina 2005) into memory and then illustrates how to generate plots that show the symmetric and asymmetric winds, as well as the evolution of winds over time. Users may adapt this code to undertake new analysis tasks or to translate the data into a different format.

The example code is written in Matlab, a powerful commercial data & visualization language similar to IDL. In order to use the example code, a user must first download and install Matlab on their computer. Users can also use any other software package that can read NetCDF files.

The code is provided as a zip file. Please click the link below, save it to the desired location, then unzip it in the location you wish to use it, (e.g. 'unzip QSCAT-R_MATLAB_Example.zip').

Comments and Feedback

We welcome comments and feedback about the QSCAT-R Dataset. If you find any errors in the dataset, kindly send an e-mail detailing the error(s) to drchavas@gmail.com.




This page was last updated 23 December 2015 by Daniel Chavas.